lcd4linux-users

[lcd4linux] A few Questions about Lcd4Linux

[Ognjen B. <og...@ma...>]

Hi all,

I just found out about lcd4linux, and there are some features in it 
which i really want to have for a project i am building, most notably 
the custom character support and split bargraph.

Now before i found out about lcd4linux i used lcdproc, which doesnt have 
the above abilities, but worked on a client/server model.

Now does lcd4linux support this? from what i read on your website it 
seems lcd4linux is rather static, you configure it the way you want, 
then you run it as a daemon. Is this correct or is there something 
similar to lcdproc in the idea that i can write a client and interface 
it to lcd4linux? if so where can i find documentation for doing this?


Cheers!

Re: [lcd4linux] A few Questions about Lcd4Linux

[Michael R. <re...@eu...>]

Hi,

> Now before i found out about lcd4linux i used lcdproc, which doesnt have 
> the above abilities, but worked on a client/server model.
> 
> Now does lcd4linux support this? from what i read on your website it 
> seems lcd4linux is rather static, you configure it the way you want, 
> then you run it as a daemon. Is this correct or is there something 
> similar to lcdproc in the idea that i can write a client and interface 
> it to lcd4linux? if so where can i find documentation for doing this?

Well, *not* having a client/server model is probably the most important 
difference between lcd4linux and lcdproc. If lcd4linux had been designed 
with a client/server structure, I wouldn't have written it, but used 
lcdproc from the beginning :-)

But this does not mean that you cannot write your own "client" (I try to 
avoid the word "client" because people tend to confuse the client and 
the server side, I call them "plugins"), which is basically a "data 
collector", or one or more "functions" added to the "evaluator".

I think the new evaluator is a very cool feature of lcd4linux. As you 
need the evaluator mostly with data collection, preparation and 
presentation, in a client/server modell you'd want to have the evaluator 
on the client. But this would collide with a clean client/server design.

Maybe you want to tell us what you want to achieve, and I'm trying to 
give you hints how you could solve your issues with lcd4linux.


bye, Michael

-- 
Michael Reinelt <re...@eu...>
http://members.eunet.at/reinelt
GPG-Key 0xDF13BA50
ICQ #288386781

Re: [lcd4linux] A few Questions about Lcd4Linux

[Ognjen B. <og...@ma...>]

Michael Reinelt wrote:

> Hi,
>
>> Now before i found out about lcd4linux i used lcdproc, which doesnt 
>> have the above abilities, but worked on a client/server model.
>>
>> Now does lcd4linux support this? from what i read on your website it 
>> seems lcd4linux is rather static, you configure it the way you want, 
>> then you run it as a daemon. Is this correct or is there something 
>> similar to lcdproc in the idea that i can write a client and 
>> interface it to lcd4linux? if so where can i find documentation for 
>> doing this?
>
>
> Well, *not* having a client/server model is probably the most 
> important difference between lcd4linux and lcdproc. If lcd4linux had 
> been designed with a client/server structure, I wouldn't have written 
> it, but used lcdproc from the beginning :-)
>
> But this does not mean that you cannot write your own "client" (I try 
> to avoid the word "client" because people tend to confuse the client 
> and the server side, I call them "plugins"), which is basically a 
> "data collector", or one or more "functions" added to the "evaluator".
>
> I think the new evaluator is a very cool feature of lcd4linux. As you 
> need the evaluator mostly with data collection, preparation and 
> presentation, in a client/server modell you'd want to have the 
> evaluator on the client. But this would collide with a clean 
> client/server design.
>
> Maybe you want to tell us what you want to achieve, and I'm trying to 
> give you hints how you could solve your issues with lcd4linux.
>
>
> bye, Michael
>
Ok,Thanks

Well I'm building a multimedia player, It will be based on a Mini-Itx 
mobo, use a 4x20 LCD screen and a keypad for song selection etc...  And 
it would be written in python (one of the aims of this project is to 
learn python programming).  I started using lcdproc but quickly found it 
very inflexible for my requirements (e.g. I would want custom play and 
pause icons + a peak bargraph, but i dont need multiple screens) , then 
I found out about lcd4linux...

Now with lcdproc i was able to use the python telnet library to connect 
to the server and send info like song names, track numbers etc..., but 
with lcd4linux im not to sure how to interface to it (using python).  Of 
course any hints are appreciated :).

Essentially i would want four widgets, three text and one split-bargraph 
(each widget has a line to itself), These would (somehow) recieve data 
that I send it from python and display on the LCD

But saying that even though lcd4linux has a lot of features that I would 
like to have, after reading a bit more about lcd4linux it seems i cannot 
use buttons (is this correct?).

If this is the case then probably  i will stick with lcdproc for now (at 
least until buttons are supported with lcd4linux). Thanks alot for the 
help =)

--------------------
Oh yeah, and keep up the good work, I really like the design of 
LCD4linux (+ the flexibility of configuration), and will most definatly 
use it on my server (as soon as I get another LCD display :)    )

Also, Looking at the design of lcd4linux it looks like it would be very 
well suited to working with graphical LCD displays, are there any plans 
at all to maybe one day support graphic displays?

Cheers

Re: [lcd4linux] A few Questions about Lcd4Linux

[Michael R. <re...@eu...>]

Hi there,

> Now with lcdproc i was able to use the python telnet library to connect 
> to the server and send info like song names, track numbers etc..., but 
> with lcd4linux im not to sure how to interface to it (using python).  Of 
> course any hints are appreciated :).

There is no way at the moment. There used to be a "python binding" with 
lcd4linux-0.9, but for all the evaluator stuff, this doesn't make too 
much sense anymore.

> Essentially i would want four widgets, three text and one split-bargraph 
> (each widget has a line to itself), These would (somehow) recieve data 
> that I send it from python and display on the LCD

Hmm... this should be possible. All you need is to provide an interface 
where python could send the data to, and lcd4linux collects them from. 
As a workaround you could simply save them into a file, and use 
lcd4linux's 'exec' plugin to read them.

In the near future there will be something like a "general file parsing 
plugin", which can read and parse any file, and read from fifo's, too. 
This will be a quite clean solution.

> But saying that even though lcd4linux has a lot of features that I would 
> like to have, after reading a bit more about lcd4linux it seems i cannot 
> use buttons (is this correct?).
Correct, not at the moment. Some display drivers already provide 
reading/polling for keypresses, but there is no internal framework yet 
that handles these events. But this will change rather quickly....

> Oh yeah, and keep up the good work, I really like the design of 
> LCD4linux (+ the flexibility of configuration), and will most definatly 
> use it on my server (as soon as I get another LCD display :)    )
Thanks!

> Also, Looking at the design of lcd4linux it looks like it would be very 
> well suited to working with graphical LCD displays, are there any plans 
> at all to maybe one day support graphic displays?
Well, graphical displays are already supported! Think of the Image 
driver, the X11 driver, the T6963 driver....

At the moment there are no widgets which really use the graphical power 
of such displays. But things like "Image widgets", or "Graphs" are planned.


bye, Michael

-- 
Michael Reinelt <re...@eu...>
http://members.eunet.at/reinelt
GPG-Key 0xDF13BA50
ICQ #288386781